Since the discovery of fullerenes, a third modification of carbon, and particularly since their preparation has been possible, work has been carried out worldwide with an increasing tendency toward their chemical modification. This is particularly true of the most stable fullerene molecule C.sub.60 which is also the one most readily obtainable in workable amounts (L. F. Lindoy, Nature, Vol. 357, 443 (1992); R. M. Baum, Chemical a. Engineering News 1991, Vol. 69, No. 50, p. 17).
Besides a series of different chemical reactions on the fullerene C.sub.60, the addition of amines to the C.sub.60 molecule has also already been reported [F. Wudl et al. in "Fullerenes: Synthesis, Properties and Chemistry of Large Carbon Clusters, Edit. G. S. Hammond and V. J. Kuck, ACS Symposium-Series, 481; Washington, D.C., 1992, p. 161; R. Seshadri, A. Govindaraj, R. Nagarajan, T. Pradeep and C. N. R. Rao, Tetrahedron Letters 33, No. 15, 2069 (1992)]. C.sub.60 is a polyfunctional molecule. A significant disadvantage in the reported reactions is the formation of complex mixtures, which cannot be separated by conventional methods, in the reaction of the polyfunctional C.sub.60 with amines. In almost every case, the reactions carried out in the manner reported hitherto give a myriad of different reaction products from which pure individual substances can only be isolated with unjustifiably great effort, if at all [A. Hirsch, Angew. Chem. 104 (1992), 808].
At present there are no known chemical reactions of nucleophiles with fullerenes which, when carried out in a conventional industrial manner, lead directly to uniform compounds or even to monoadducts or for which the subsequent application of conventional separation techniques, such as recrystallization or column chromatography, enables uniform compounds, in particular monoadducts, to be obtained from the mixtures formed. In "Tetrahedron Letters 33, page 2069 (1992)" mention is indeed made, inter alia, of obtaining a virtually pure 1:1 adduct of n-butylamine with C.sub.60, but apart from information about IR and UV absorption bands, no material data are reported and no information is given on the elemental composition based on analytical results and on the isolation of such a fullerene derivative.